Carney pushed back at reporters frustrated with the shifting narrative. “I said that I didn’t know (these details) until Friday, but I’m getting this information to you now,” he said.

Republicans instantly took issue with the latest White House timeline.

“I can’t wait until tomorrow’s version of events,” tweeted Brendan Buck, spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner.

***

Carney wasn’t the only one peddling the wrong story — one that easily and instantly could have been corrected by Ruemmler herself or, perhaps, others in the White House Counsel’s Office who might have been working on the matter of the IG report.

Instead, another top White House aide gave me the same song and dance last week after Carney did…

Knowing the consequences that would befall the Obama administration if the White House or Obama’s reelection campaign knew in real time that the IRS was targeting conservatives, I desperately want to believe Pfeiffer. I’ve known him for years. I like him. He’s never lied to me.

But Pfeiffer is part of an institution that has demonstrated an inability and/or unwillingness to tell the full truth about the IRS scandal and a spate of other controversies. The White House can’t be trusted…

In politics, as in life, when you constantly change your story, even on small matters, you sow doubt about your credibility and competence.

In different ways, each of the so-called Obama scandals revolve around the issue of trust (as I wrote here, here, here, here, and here). The president’s greatest asset is his credibility. If this pattern of spinning and shifting stories continues, it could become a liability.

***

First they came for Fox News, and they did not speak out—because they were not Fox News. Then they came for government whistleblowers, and they did not speak out—because they were not government whistleblowers. Then they came for the maker of a YouTube video, and—okay, we know how this story ends. But how did we get here?…

It’s instructive to go back to the dawn of Hope and Change. It was 2009, and the new administration decided it was appropriate to use the prestige of the White House to viciously attack a news organization—Fox News—and the journalists who work there. Remember, President Obama had barely been in office and had enjoyed the most laudatory press of any new president in modern history. Yet even one outlet that allowed dissent or criticism of the president was one too many. This should have been a red flag to everyone, regardless of what they thought of Fox News. The math was simple: if the administration would abuse its power to try and intimidate one media outlet, what made anyone think they weren’t next?…

Trashing reporters comes easy in Obama-land. Behind the scenes, Obama-centric Democratic operatives brand any reporter who questions the administration as a closet conservative, because what other explanation could there be for a reporter critically reporting on the government?

***

There’s really no reason for the press to suggest that the recent slew of scandals involving the Obama administration — Benghazi, the AP phone-record seizure, the snooping in James Rosen’s e-mail, the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups, and so on — are a confusing jumble. There is a very clear thread running through all of the administration’s actions…

Some parts of this administration focus on preventing information that is contrary to the administration’s agenda from getting out, or hindering its distribution, and making sure that the only information that goes out supports the perspective of the administration. Other parts leak confidential information designed to attack the reputations of those holding perspectives the administration opposes (NOM, the nine conservative groups) or other whistleblowers (ATF agent Dodson).

***

Moral authority entails a moral hazard: the temptation to abuse political and cultural power. Today’s liberal left conceives of itself as being on the side of all that is good, right and reasonable. It caricatures the right as racist, extremist, greedy, dishonest, fanatically religious, prone to violence–and dangerous because, through the Republican Party, it has maintained parity in the political arena. Of the 10 presidential elections since Watergate, each party won 5; and voters haven’t entrusted the Democrats with full control of government for more than two years since the Carter era.

If ordinary politics are a battle between good and evil, then winning becomes an overriding moral imperative. The end justifies the means: Journalists shade or conceal the truth in the service of a “larger truth.” Government restricts political speech in the name of promoting democracy. Administrative agencies perpetrate injustice in the name of “social justice.” That’s how IRS agents could think it was their patriotic duty to help fix an election for the party in power…

If Obama is no savior, neither is he the devil. He is but a man who, through a combination of ambition, talent, character and luck, became the central figure in the left’s crisis of authority. That crisis had been building for decades, seems to be reaching a culmination now, and will be resolved we know not how, except that we expect the process to be convulsive.

***

I didn’t understand it all back then, but I understand it now. Once there were old bosses. Now there are new bosses. And shopkeepers still keep their mouths shut. Tavern owners still keep their mouths shut.

Even billionaires keep their mouths shut.

One hard-working billionaire whose children own the Chicago Cubs dared to open his mouth. Joe Ricketts considered funding a political group critical of Obama before last year’s campaign. Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s former chief of staff, made it clear that if the Cubs wanted City Hall’s approval to refurbish decrepit Wrigley Field, Ricketts better back off.

It happened. He backed off. It was sickening. But it was and is Chicago.

And now — with the IRS used as political muscle and the Obama administration keeping that secret until after the president was elected — America understands it too.

***

***

“I think in order for government to gain its trust back, someone needs to be fired, someone needs to be held responsible, and, if it’s criminal, someone needs to go to jail.”

Blowback

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Still have time to conquer some turf. Wasn’t going to say anything, but then the thread needed rescuing (I thought), but then it didn’t, but Jackie was about, and then Spark had some kind of seizure (can’t just skip that) . . . anyway, later. :)

so is the morning joe crew upset that issa is making this girl come to congress to plead the fifth to embarass her?
———————–
steve rattner defending dear leader to the bitter end natch, even al hunt and cokie knows that the doj and rosen is serious business

SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by wickedness; the former promotes our happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.

Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries BY A GOVERNMENT, which we might expect in a country WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer. Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise. For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform, and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him out of two evils to choose the least. WHEREFORE, security being the true design and end of government, it unanswerably follows that whatever FORM thereof appears most likely to ensure it to us, with the least expence and greatest benefit, is preferable to all others.
-Thomas Paine, Common Sense

We have a FORM of government that has the greatest expense and least benefit for that cost and it is no longer a preferable form of government and it inflicts upon us suffering by our creation of it. Government is, in its best of forms, a necessary evil only and the only good it can do is in the equal treatment of all men under the same law without favor nor fervor, but as a mere function of its being. There is no greater good that any government can do without destroying the liberty of man in its doing… when it goes from mere protector of the rights of man by law to seeking to enforce its will upon man and society it turns from a necessary evil to an absolute one.

That started decades ago.

Yet, in this modern age of being able to process information much more quickly, of being able to reach out to our fellow man in an instant, such authority can be withered far, far faster than it appeared if WE are but willing to be BETTER PEOPLE and depend not upon government for help that puts bias and favoritism into the law. Government is not protector of the weak, uplifter of the downtrodden nor is it the source of any good at all, for that is the heavy burden placed upon each and every single one of us to do on our own for the betterment of ourselves and our society. Making money in the service of offering better and cheaper goods and services to our fellow man is not an evil but a good, as it allows more and more to partake of that prosperity via profit in reward for creating such opportunity. We need a simple safeguard against thieves, not a guarantee of prosperity as that cannot be done by any government, ever, no matter how cleverly devised. Simple protection from our fellow man who seeks to take from us property, life and liberty in an unlawful fashion, who seeks mere enrichment of himself and not greater prosperity through creativity and cost cutting, that is a wrong that can and MUST be done by government lest society go lawless. If we had but equality of law and equal treatment under it without preference added save to protection of life and property from those seeking to seize and destroy each, then we would have the greatest benefit that government can offer.

Now we come to the conclusion of what happens when you invest morality in government and seek to make it the provider of good, and that is government becoming an absolute evil. Yet any society has within its power the ability to change or abolish a government that has become the cause of its misery. Short term pain is necessary to get long term gain and the securing of freedom and liberty because no matter what the size nor cost of the pain is, the loss of the freedom and liberty is a crime against man and all mankind by enslaving man to government for the purposes of the few and the ill of all. That is not a choice our children are to make.

It is a choice we must make within ourselves.

If we are to have a better government then we, the people, must make ourselves into better people and do without the outrages and inflicted morals of government upon us as those do us no good at all. Rather the self-inflicted pain of having to lead a good life to do good than the lash and chains of government saying it can do good in your name. No Nation built upon slaves ever did much good for them and that is the cost we must remember if nothing is done now, by us. The pain hasn’t even yet begun, but at least now we can start to clearly identify the source of our misery and call it for what it is: pure evil created from necessary evil by those seeking their own ends to enslave mankind to their ideals. No good has ever come of that.

Carney pushed back at reporters frustrated with the shifting narrative. “I said that I didn’t know (these details) until Friday, but I’m getting this information to you now,” he said.

So quit you effing liar. You have no credibility with anybody outside the West Wing because day after day you get up there and tell things that are not true. Live off the salary of your journalist wife while you figure out what you want to do when you decide to go legitimate and start working for a living you sissy boy bastard.

No mercy at all to the crooks in government. I hope she one day gets really humiliated and has to do the perp walk as Federal agents arrest her at her IRS office at high noon on a bright sunny day.

Liam on May 22, 2013 at 6:36 AM

Let’s make it a 5K perp walk! Parade her up and down Constitution Avenue (where the IRS HQ is ironically located) and let any and all Americans who have been harmed by the woman get the chance to tell her off.

The chaos of multi scandals will most likely get the reimge out of any trouble they might have encountered with one scandal at a time. Also it allows amnesty to move along at warp speed since its now being ignored.
The sad thing is that four years later the commie regime still plays our side like a fiddle. They know how we will react to everything that happens and what course they will take to how we react.
In short they are miles ahead of us politically.

The cut below from PJM shows that few in the Senate are really concerned about border security which is all important if we don’t want Mexifornia repeated at every border state we have in the country.

I was disappointed the Committee rejected an amendment I offered that would’ve required real border security results. Another promise from Washington, D.C., to secure the border won’t cut it,” he said. “I am deeply concerned about this and other flaws in the current proposal. I want the system to work for everyone, and I am hopeful that common sense will eventually lead to common ground.”

A live thread is necessary today.
However, please don’t drink every time Lois pleads the Fifth. Especially, if you’re at work.

kingsjester on May 22, 2013 at 8:06 AM

Or driving.

Can I be the first to say it…..

If Lois Lerner doesn’t have anything to hide, why doesn’t she answer the questions??? I mean this is supposed to be the most open government ever.

On a serious note, it is right and well that Lerner exercises the civil rights that she denied others by her actions as an agent of the federal government. But by doing so, she should no longer be in a position of authority or paid by the taxpayers. Congress is asking her questions related to her job and if she refuses to answer her employment should be terminated.

Scrumpy,whatever it is, whatever your reasons for leaving HA, please give Axefellow your email address so that I can stay in contact with you. I hope you are well, Spritely One, and we will, all of us, miss you dearly.

If Obama is no savior, neither is he the devil. He is but a man who, through a combination of ambition, talent, character and luck, became the central figure in the left’s crisis of authority. That crisis had been building for decades, seems to be reaching a culmination now, and will be resolved we know not how, except that we expect the process to be convulsive.

But I couldn’t forget it. I couldn’t understand how we could argue about politics over baklava and watermelon and coffee, but not put it into practice.

We could support a political candidacy, we could donate or work for one or another politician that we agreed with.

This is America, I said.

“Are you in your good senses?” said my father. “We have lives here. We have businesses. If we get involved in politics, they will ruin us.”

And no one, not the Roosevelt Democrats or the Reagan Republicans, disagreed. The socialists, the communists, the royalists, everyone nodded their heads.

This was Chicago. And for a business owner to get involved meant one thing: It would cost you money and somebody from government could destroy you.

The health inspectors would come, and the revenue department, the building inspectors, the fire inspectors, on and on. The city code books aren’t thick because politicians like to write new laws and regulations. The codes are thick because when government swings them at a citizen, they hurt.

And who swings the codes and regulations at those who’d open their mouths? A government worker. That government worker owes his or her job to the political boss. And that boss has a boss.

The worker doesn’t have to be told. The worker wants a promotion. If an irritant rises, it is erased. The hack gets a promotion. This is government.

So everybody kept their mouths shut, and Chicago was hailed by national political reporters as the city that works.
I didn’t understand it all back then, but I understand it now.

If we are to have a better government then we, the people, must make ourselves into better people and do without the outrages and inflicted morals of government upon us as those do us no good at all. Rather the self-inflicted pain of having to lead a good life to do good than the lash and chains of government saying it can do good in your name. No Nation built upon slaves ever did much good for them and that is the cost we must remember if nothing is done now, by us. The pain hasn’t even yet begun, but at least now we can start to clearly identify the source of our misery and call it for what it is: pure evil created from necessary evil by those seeking their own ends to enslave mankind to their ideals. No good has ever come of that.